By Mat Di Salvo
2 min read
Samourai Wallet developer Keonne Rodriguez was sentenced to five years in prison Thursday after pleading guilty to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter.
Alongside the sentence, Rodriguez was fined $250,000, according to courtroom reporter Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press. Rodriguez will have to surrender for his prison sentence on December 19.
The Samourai Wallet app allowed people to hide their Bitcoin transactions by mixing them with those from other users, making it easier to obscure the movements of coins.
U.S. authorities last year shuttered their platform and arrested developers Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, alleging that criminals used the platform and the defendants had turned a blind eye. Hill is set to be sentenced on November 19.
The U.S. Department of Justice in July agreed to drop money laundering charges after Hill and Rodriguez pleaded guilty to operating an unlicensed money transmitter. A money laundering charge is more serious and carries a longer jail sentence.
The indictment filed last year alleged that "while offering Samourai as a 'privacy' service, the defendants knew that it was a haven for criminals to engage in large-scale money laundering and sanctions evasion."
But the Samourai Case has been controversial: Crypto advocacy groups spoke to Decrypt earlier this year, and argued that the money transmitting count was invalid because prosecuting software developers who don't control user funds is outside the meaning of the statute.
Coin mixers are services that obfuscate crypto transactions by combining them, making payments harder to trace.
Such apps made headlines after U.S. authorities banned Americans from using the Ethereum-based Tornado Cash in 2022, saying that criminals had used that platform to launder dirty money. In August, Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm was found guilty of unlicensed money transmitting.
Editor's note: This story was updated after publication with additional details.
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